To the Gates of Atlanta covers the period from the Confederate victory at Kennesaw Mountain, 27 June 1864, leading up to the Battle of Peach Tree Creek, 20 July 1864, and the first of four major battles for Atlanta that culminated in the Battle of Jonesboro, 31 August and 1 September 1864.

To the Gates of Atlanta also gives the important, but previously untold stories of the actions and engagements that befell the sleepy hamlet of Buckhead and the surrounding woods that today shelter many parts of Atlanta’s vast community.

From Smyrna to Ruff’s Mill, Roswell to Vinings, Nancy Creek to Peach Tree Creek, and Moore’s Mill to Howell’s Mill, To the Gates of Atlanta tells the story of each as part of the larger story which led to the fall of The Gate City of the South.

William Dean and the First Chinese Study BibleBy author: Chung-Yan Joyce ChanScholarship in the area of Chinese Bible translation history has been devoted primarily to the production of the UNION VERSION. This book will examine a significant, yet much overlooked Chinese Bible translation project produced by William Dean (1807–1895), an American Baptist missionary to the Chinese people in Siam and China.
This study utilizes extensive primary sources in both the English and Chinese language from the American Baptist Historical Society Archives and the Bible Society Library at the Cambridge University Library.
Published jointly with the Acadia Centre for Baptist and Anabaptist Studies.

The Best of Bob Steed: The Not-so-serious but seriously accomplished Life of Robert L. SteedBy author: Robert L. SteedWith: Chuck PerryFormer United States Attorney General Griffin Bell, a partner with Robert L. Steed in the prestigious Atlanta law firm of King & Spalding, once described Steed as "half lawyer, half wit. His law partners insist he's a writer, and his writer friends insist he's a lawyer." In fact, Steed built an enviable career in both fields. A graduate of Mercer Law School, Steed became one of the nation’s leading bond attorneys during an era of rapid economic development. All the while he wrote humorous essays that were published in the Atlanta Constitution and collected into books; his barbs were targeted at the vainglorious in politics, entertainment, and society, always imploring them, "Don't take yourself so damn serious." That attitude also served Steed well as a member of the Mercer University Board of Trustees from 1974 till the present. His insight, humor, and love of Mercer helped him to guide the university, as chairman of the Board, through some tempestuous times. Long-time Mercer President Dr. Kirby Godsey said, "I can honestly say that Mercer never had a more loyal alumnus than Bob Steed." Greatness often sprouts from modest roots, and such was the case with Steed. Shared here for the first time is the story behind the persona--the family, wife, wit, and commitment that coalesced to form an extraordinary scholar, writer, and philanthropist.

Cosmic Defiance: Updike’s Kierkegaard and the Maples StoriesBy author: David CroweJohn Updike once wrote that many of his works are "illustrations of Kierkegaard," and yet no current study provides an extended, convincing reason why this is so, why Updike came to live by Søren Kierkegaard's ideas. This study does, telling the story of Updike's life-altering encounter with Fear and Trembling in his early career, and tracing the subsequent evolution of Updike's complex and coherent theology.

To Make a Difference: James T. McAfeeBy author: Scott WalkerSuccess requires the relentless yearning and courage of countless generations for a family to reach a culminating moment of great contribution and distinction. With the birth of James T. McAfee, Jr., in 1939, such fulfillment coalesced. Over the span of the next six decades, Jim McAfee emerges as a significant leader within the healthcare industry, as well as a generous and visionary contributor to higher education. Drawing on family memoirs and a cache of personal interviews, Scott Walker recounts the career of Jim McAfee, and the impact of his life on Belmont University, Mercer University, and Union University.

Selected Spiritual Writings of Anne Dutton: Eighteenth-Century, British-Baptist, Woman Theologian: Volume 7: Words of GraceBy author: JoAnn Ford WatsonVolume 7: Words of Grace is the last volume of letters rounding out Anne Dutton's correspondence as a significant spiritual writer and encourager of revival and growth in holiness. Particularly important is the precious treasure of her seventeen letters sent to the Rev. George Whitefield and his friends and acquaintances in 1745 to encourage his work and ministry in England and in the colonies, as well as his orphanage in Bethesda. Also included are two additional 1745 letters—one on the being and working of sin and the other on the duty and privilege of a believer—sent to Whitefield's Society at the Tabernacle in London. Three collections of Dutton's letters—Volumes I (1740), IV (1746), and VIII (1750)—on spiritual subjects addressed to relations and friends also appear in this volume. These letters show her to be a spiritual director, guide, and voice of holiness in evangelical revival in England in the eighteenth century.

Moving and filled with unexpected ideas and imagery, The Color of All Things is a love letter from one man to one woman, but it offers love from each of us to all of us. Brimming with a touching and generous joy, this is a book of everyday needs that can only be filled with a genuine and lasting love. This is the third volume of poetry from Philip Lee Williams, following on his Elegies for the Water and his national book of the year (Books and Culture magazine) The Flower Seeker: An Epic Poem of William Bartram. Like his other volumes of poetry, The Color of All Things moves slowly through the natural world without sentimentality but with surefooted grace and lovely rhythms. Georgia poet laureate Judson Mitcham says that in Williams’s poetry we hear “the distinctive voice of a poet who knows how to tell the stories that matter, how to hold still and take a good look at the natural world and let himself be filled with praise, a poet who knows how to find the right prayer and how to pray it.”

In 1996, as James Dickey struggled with his impending death and endeavored to overcome it—an effort that had always engaged his imagination— he re-established his priorities. Recognizing that he would die from suffocation brought on by fibrosis of the lungs, he attempted to wring two long poems, “Show Us the Sea” and “For Jules Bacon,” from his earlier works and from his old self, not the drunken genius but the football player and weight lifter, the combat aviator and caring father. The transformation was, in all-important respects, a resurrection.

These two lengthy poems, together with shorter poems, are thus, literally, the “last motion” but thematically, these works allude to his previous poetic efforts and summarize his life as death approached. The volume continues the concerns that were always Dickey’s primary interests: family, war, death, and love. Moreover, the poetry echoes, in its images and dramatic resolutions, earlier works. While these poems depict the inevitability of death, they also reveal the redemptive quality of that light and acknowledge the transience of its glory.

Death, and the Day’s Light, the volume of poetry James Dickey was working on when he died, offers the writer’s final views on love and death, fathers and sons, and war and resurrection. This volume constitutes an invaluable addition to the canon of a major American poet and allows for a complete understanding of his oeuvre.

In the Land of the Living: Wartime Letters by Confederates from the Chattahoochee Valley of Alabama and GeorgiaEdited by: Ray MathisWith: Douglas Clare PurcellThis unique book, originally published in a limited edition in 1982 and out of print for many years, is the most comprehensive collection of Civil War letters written by residents of Southeastern Alabama and Southwestern Georgia to be published.
Poignant in emotion, informative in detail, and broad in scope, the correspondence contained here provides us with a unique opportunity to understand the Civil War and its effect on individuals and families from an intensely personal perspective. The writers, the great majority of them unlettered and expressing themselves in a disarmingly honest manner in their heartfelt missives, collectively paint a compelling portrait of a watershed moment in national history from a regional viewpoint. They make well-known events tangible and lesser-known sidebars illuminating.

Good ole boy Dickie Frye vanishes from the Georgia hills and the urbane Fletcher Carlyle bursts onto the New York publishing scene, winning the Nobel Prize for literature. But when a psychotic rampage lands Carlyle in Weatherhaven, eminent psychologist Anton Kohl finds himself talking to Dickie Frye. Kohl’s instincts tell him Frye is not lying—but what he says can’t possibly be true. A fallen priest comes out of Sumerian mythology, the love of Kohl’s life comes out of his past, and a chicken comes out of a posh apartment on Central Park West to meet his fate. Anton Kohl’s carefully constructed world is about to be deconstructed.One part fable and one part Southern yarn, Kiss of the Jewel Bird soars from ancient Mesopotamia to modern-day Manhattan, rewriting history and opening a window onto a wider, more magical world, where the path to destiny is anything but straight.

Tigers in the Tempest: Savannah State University and the Struggle for Civil RightsBy author: F. Erik BrooksSavannah State University is Georgia's oldest public historically black university. From its inception as the black land grant college in1890, the roots of black activism were a core element of the school's existence. In this provocative exploration of the issues of race, politics, and higher education in Savannah, Georgia, Brooks unveils how Georgia's political climate affected the growth and progression at Savannah State University. Brooks interweaves local, state, national politics, the history of the university, and the Civil Rights movement as a backdrop to showcase Savannah State University students' participation in the struggle for equality from the institution's beginning in 1890 to the election of Barack Obama as the first African American president of the United States in 2008.

Tree Heresies: PoemsBy author: William WrightWilliam Wright’s eighth collection of poems is an expansive personal journey that includes poems about subjects as varied as a farm woman forsaken by her husband, yellow jackets, insomnia, a mountain witch, salt marshes, a ditch filled with rainwater, and even a post-apocalyptic portrait of the last person on Earth. Beginning with “Prologue,” a piece that embeds a kaleidoscopic, novel-like vision of a small agricultural town and a few of its inhabitants, these poems capture the exterior world and recontextualize its many forms through a dreamlike logic, harnessing radiant imagery and strong aural texture through lines and words that stir both mind and heart. Here, Wright reveals how the most luminous forms often dwell in even the darkest subjects and images.